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5 Next-Level 3D Printed Drones That Are Pushing the Industry Forward

As the applications of drones varies and grows, it becomes more and more important to develop specific designs that are based on its particular function. A drone built for delivery requires different specifications than a drone built for surveying or image capture. 3D printing is driving this evolution of drone technology by providing access to affordable rapid prototyping and customization and allowing faster innovation to occur. Whether it’s for disaster relief, mapping, or carrying heavy payloads, a drone can better serve its function with the time and cost efficiency and attention to detail that 3D printing provides.

Here are 5 drone projects that have pushed the
boundaries with the help of 3D printing:

Disaster
Relief X VEIN Drone by Team ROK

After the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami brought disaster on a massive scale in 2011, Yuki Ogasawara and Ryo Kumeda of Team ROK were inspired to create a drone built especially for disaster relief and search and rescue. A few years later they used 3D printing and generative design to create their x-shaped X VEIN drone. Because disaster aid presents its own specific set of challenges, the team used 3D printing to be able to customize their drone based on their exact needs.

The design features freeform curves, and a 3D printed lattice-patterned body for maintaining minimal weight while still giving it the strength required to operate in difficult conditions. X VEIN is able to fly within a 500 meter range and can be equipped with thermographic and infrared-imaging and capture images that can be viewed in real time to access remote or obstructed areas and help locate survivors. Because many of its parts are 3D printed, if they are damaged on a mission they can be re-printed and replaced on site. 3D Printing was a crucial tool to be able to have the level of design freedom necessary to build a drone with these specific needs and it ensures that the drone can be further customized in the future depending on the situation at hand.

CargoCopter
by KU Leuven Researchers

Built to deliver payloads over long distances, KU Leuven research team created the 3D printed CargoCopter, a hybrid drone that combines fixed wings and multi-rotors so that it can take off vertically, hover and then fly horizontally. It was designed to expand the range and speed of traditional multi-rotor drones and thanks to its hybrid nature can efficiently transition from take-off to long-distance flight. It can carry up to 5kg, has a range of 60km and can fly up to 100km/hour. The team used 3D printing to rapidly prototype over 3 years to arrive at this model and their designs were able to quickly evolve. Thanks to the customization flexibility of 3D printing they are able to optimize each new CargoCopter design based on the needs of its particular mission.

BLUEROV2
Submarine Drone by Blue Robotics

Aerial drones are not the only ones making use of 3D printing. When Blue Robotics set out to build their underwater drones, they needed parts that could withstand the harsh conditions of the ocean and had trouble sourcing ones that were durable enough and weren’t overly expensive. They then turned to 3D printing to be able to prototype their own parts at a much more affordable rate. Using 3D printing to prototype also led them to customize parts to fit their exact needs. The BLUEROV2 comes with a high definition, wide-angle low-light camera with two or four lights to illuminate the ocean around it. It can travel to a depth of up to 100 meters and is built to withstand currents. The ROV is designed with expansion and modification in mind, and is fitted with a customizable frame to accommodate a range of functions.

The tiny drone named Piccolissimo. Image source: PennToday

Piccolissimo
The Tiny Drone by Matt Piccoli from UPenn

In 2016, Matt Piccoli from UPenn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science designed the world’s smallest steerable drone “Piccolissimo”. The tiny drone comes in two sizes: one weighs 2.5 grams and is the size of a quarter, and the other steerable version is 2 grams heavier and a centimeter wider. It was 3D printed using lightweight plastic. It has two moving parts, the robot’s body and motor, which spins one way 40 times per second, and its propeller spinning 800 per second in the opposite direction. Its motion is determined by how quickly the propeller and body are spinning, which can be controlled by infrared signals. The drone can carry a load of up to one gram, like a small camera or sensor. Its size suggests that it would be a fitting model for surveying or search and rescue missions, as a few hundred could be used to cover more ground than a single larger sized drone.

The
Int-Ball by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

The Int-Ball, or JEM Internal Ball Camera was built using 3D printing to float aboard the International Space Station taking video and photo documentation. The spherical drone arrived on the ISS in June of 2017 and weighs 1kg, has a 15cm diameter and moves with 12 propellers. The Int-Ball features both internal and external components produced using 3D printing and is designed to float in a zero-gravity environment with the ability to move autonomously or be maneuvered by operators on Earth. It is set to reduce the crew’s workload by 10% by taking on image capturing duties.

3D printing helps to redefine what is possible when it comes to exploring and achieving innovation in drone technology. Its efficiency in prototyping and customization make room for a higher level of productivity and imagination, improving the way drones are designed and manufactured. If you are looking to create the next innovative drone, 3D printing is essential to facilitating the most efficient and flexible production process.

See how Shapeways can help your drone business transition to 3D printing!

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Why 3D Printing Is Key For Mass Customizable Products

luxmea face mask variations
LuxMea’s customized face masks. Photo source: LuxMea Studio

Consumers in today’s market expect more and more for their products and experiences to be tailored to them, and to have more control over what they pay for. The challenge in meeting that demand for mass customization is having to switch from producing hundreds to millions of the same item to efficiently producing small batches of personalized items within a similarly short time frame without costs going up astronomically. Additive manufacturing helps maximize efficiency in making large-scale personalization more accessible.

Customer-Led Designs

Companies that use 3D printing for customization set up design interfaces to allow customers to make their own design choices in regards to color, texture, material or fit. For example, some automotive companies have given their customers the ability to choose their vehicle’s colors or include personalized lettering on the interiors. Any product can potentially be customized according to what suits the buyer: cars, furniture, fixtures, jewelry and more.

3D Scanning for a Perfect Fit

With 3D scanning software becoming more prominent and user-friendly, it is easier than ever for customers to contribute to the design process themselves. The footwear industry is making use of 3D printing technology, allowing customers to make aesthetic choices for their shoes and also to personalize their insoles based on their specific foot shape, weight or running style. Customization is also becoming a standard in the tabletop gaming industry, with more and more companies offering customizable game pieces.

A smart-phone app can take a scan of a person’s face or other body part and generate a 3D file that can be used to create a product that fits them perfectly. LuxMea has used this technology to produce face masks that are not only aesthetically customizable but also provide a perfect fit for the individual wearer, making them safer and more comfortable.

3D scans can be used to personalize earphones, shoe insoles, eyewear and many more products thanks to 3D printing technology. This ability to creatively participate in the design process boosts customer satisfaction, as the ability to have more say in what they spend money on makes the process more fun and efficient for the users.

Customization
to Improve Lives

Advances in 3D scanning technology contribute heavily to the medical industry, an area where personalization can be crucial. With the ability to scan specific parts of the body, more accurate and patient-specific improvements can be made to someone’s health and wellbeing. 3D printing allows for more affordable and personalized prosthetics, implants and other aids ensuring a higher level of comfort and support. This is an area where perfect fit as well as timely delivery can be of the utmost importance to the success of medical devices and equipment. 3D printing is able to surpass the limits of traditional processes because of its ability to produce highly complex parts quicker. Customization also improves the instruments and supplies that physicians use, making them more efficient and comfortable and improving surgical outcomes.

Understanding Preferences and Trends

By allowing customers to make more of their own choices, the process provides key insights into trends and consumer preferences. Customers’ tastes can be used to help companies evolve their products and make product developments to fit the needs of their customers.

On-Demand
Manufacturing

Another benefit of using 3D printing for customized products is a shift towards more on-demand production. By placing more emphasis on smaller personalized products instead of mass-produced products before orders are received, inventories can be reduced and a substantial amount of waste can be avoided. This can save money in material costs and create a more sustainable manufacturing process.

The 3D printing industry is growing at a very fast rate, and is making it easier to transition to using 3D printing over traditional mass production methods as time goes on. However, the transition can still be expensive and time consuming. 3D printing services like Shapeways can ease that transition by giving you access to high quality manufacturing as well as tailored e-commerce support. Let us know how we can help with your mass-customization needs.

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Improving Plant Efficiency with 3D Printed Production Aids

Additive manufacturing (or popularly known as 3D printing) has proven itself to rapidly manufacture strong and functional parts. The technology is changing the way products are being manufactured but alternatively it is also improving the efficiency of traditional manufacturing processes.

To put this in
perspective, all manufacturing factories require the help of production aids to
manufacture and assemble the products. A production aid is any device type of
tool, jig, fixture, or a device used to enhance, optimize, and assist or
speedup the manufacturing or assembly process.

More often than not, production aids are customized to suit the product being manufactured but manufacturing such customized tools in limited quantities is always costly.

Considering the importance of production aids and its limited quantities, 3D printing can be a perfect fit in this scenario. Factories can leverage the capabilities of 3D printing to produce them at reduced costs. 3D printing can hand a powerful tool to organizations to improve its overall plant efficiency.

We’ll first look at the benefits of using 3D printing in creating production aids.

VALUE OF 3D PRINTED
PRODUCTION AIDS

  • Faster
    Time-to-Market

With 3D printing,
production aids can be manufactured rapidly. This starts a chain reaction to also
speed up the pace of production and assembly, thus cutting down the
time-to-market to take your product from factory to customer.

  • Improved
    Plant Efficiency

With faster production
and assembly leading to faster output and delivery, plant efficiency can be
considerably improved.

  • Reduced
    Cost of Production

By improving part
repeatability and accuracy, rejections can be reduced, leading to reduced cost
of production. When manufacturing jigs and fixtures, 3D printing can eliminate
the time needed for iterations before finalizing on the desired jig or fixture.

  • Performance
    Improvements

By using the design freedom capability of 3D printing, innovative and complex fixtures can be designed and printed to improve the production and assembly performance with fewer constraints.

  • Better Production
    Aids

Compared to traditionally manufactured production aids, 3D printed production aids can be more efficient. It can be made from lighter materials but still offer comparable strength and durability. Alternatively, the tools can be topology optimized to reduce weight and material usage.

  • Part
    Consolidation

3D printing offers the
capability to consolidate multiple jigs and fixtures into a single production aid
thus operators are able to perform multiple operations at the same work station
using a same fixture, saving costs, storage, and handling.

  • Worker
    Safety

As factories are
getting more advanced there is even more impetus on ensuring workers’ safety.
By 3D printing customized safety aid solutions such as safety latches, casings,
locks, and even obsolete safety parts, the workplace safety can be improved.

TYPES OF 3D PRINTED
PRODUCTION AIDS

Let’s take a look at some of the different types of production aids that
can be 3D printed to improve overall plant efficiency.

Jigs & Fixtures

Jigs and fixtures
are customized tools used to hold, guide and control the movement of a workpiece
while other operations are carried out.

Examples of
customizable jigs and fixtures include guides for burr removal, dimensional
accuracy testing, sticker pasting in packaging operations, etc. All can be
manufactured on demand.

Guides

Drill guides are a
commonplace tool on all shop floors. They ensure that holes are drilled in
their intended center and are not deflecting from this position in either
linear or angular terms and are staying within the prescribed tolerance limits.

Marking Tools

In traditional manufacturing a part travels from one work station to the other as different operators perform cutting operations and it is important that the cutting accuracy and repeatability is maintained in all parts. For this, a tool can be 3D printed to perfectly identify the marks to perform accurate cutting operation.

Safety Latches, Casings
and Locks

Apart from making sure
the production is carried out efficiently, the plant also has to ensure the
safety of its workers. For this a plant employs multiple safety tools like
latches, casings, locks and more. These safety tools help minimize on-site
accidents.

Go / No-Go Gauges

Go / No-Go gauges are
used in a manufacturing plants as a testing tool to test weather a finished part
meets the dimensional standards. A Go/No-Go gauge can easily identify any
deflection of the part in terms of its form, shape and dimension. It can
rapidly conform or reject a part according to the fit in the gauge instead of
using other measurement tools like calipers.

Maintenance Parts

Custom quality check and maintenance parts a can be rapidly manufactured.
Simple customizable tools such as stopper tools used to tighten nuts and bolts
can be kept in the individual machine’s toolbox, thus increasing maintenance
efficiency while saving time.

3D PRINTING OF
PRODUCTION AIDS

Production aids can be 3D printed through
various 3D printing technologies. For industrial printing, the commonly used
technologies include Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM),
Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) and Binder Jetting.

SLS 3D Printing

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is a
powder-bed fusion technology. It uses a powdered material that is sintered via
a laser to form the object. This technology offers greater design freedom than
some of the other 3D printing technologies. For parts involving complex
designs, SLS can be effectively used.

SLM & DMLS 3D Printing

FDM printing can offer cheaper production
aids, SLA can offer aids with smoother surface finishes while SLS can provide
greater design freedom but all these technologies print only with polymers. For
industrial parts requiring heavy-duty jigs, metal 3D printing is recommended.
Metal 3D printing technologies suitable for production aids include SLM, DMLS and
Binder Jetting.

Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Direct Metal
Laser Sintering (DMLS) are both powder-bed fusion technologies but for metals.
Both of these technologies can be used for small-size precision production
aids.

Binder Jetting

Binder Jetting technology can be used in
case of large parts. This technology also uses powdered metal material but uses
a binder material to fuse the metal particles together. The greatest advantage
of binder jetting is that it can manufacture parts at a fraction of the cost
compared to DMLS/SLM and Material Jetting. Moreover it is suitable for low-to-medium
batch production when multiple tools need to be mass produced for the entire
factory.

CONCLUSION

Factories can leverage 3D printing to create high-quality production tools to improve their plant efficiency. With 3D printing’s wide applicability, range of materials, design freedom and manufacturing flexibility, this technology provides many benefits that should not be overlooked.

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Not Just Faster…Better: How 3D Printing Allows for Rapid Improvements

3D printing has done a lot to revolutionize the
manufacturing industry. Most people look at how much faster 3D printing can be
than traditional methods. While this is certainly a huge feature of this
technology, it is far from the only benefit. Modern 3D printers are actually
able to outperform traditional manufacturing in many areas.

Flexibility in Design

When trying to create something using traditional manufacturing technologies, each new part has to have its own tool, mold, or die before it can be created. 3D printers, on the other hand, are much more flexible on the creation process. Each design is created in a CAD (computer-aided design) program and can be ready in hours instead of days or weeks. The 3D printer will be able to incorporate each new design on the very next run, which means reduced downtime for each iteration.

Complex Designs Done Fast

Interlocking design 3D printed in Versatile Plastic (Nylon 12)

Advanced 3D printers have the ability to create one or more of the following features in one print job:

  1. interlocking designs
  2. Full colors
  3. Multiple materials and colors

Having a 3D printer that can incorporate complex designs with multiple moving pieces and/or print in different material and color variations makes creating product varieties much quicker and easier than with traditional manufacturing. This increased flexibility eliminates the time and expenses needed for additional product assembly.

No Minimum Order Requirements

When printing in smaller quantities, the costs associated with 3D printing are far lower than those with traditional manufacturing options. One of the most significant savings comes from eliminating the need to create entirely new dies or molds for each project.

Because of this, there is no need to require large orders of a single part, which is typically necessary for traditional manufacturing. 3D printing can efficiently produce individual products, or small batches of products, without the added time in creating dies or molds. This makes 3D printing the ideal solution to produce high volumes of unique orders.

Reduced Waste

3D printing will typically have much less waste than traditional manufacturing technologies. Without the need to order hundreds or thousands of each part in advance, every product can be printed on demand. This helps eliminate the environmental impact when surplus products are produced and discarded, and reduces the need for additional storage.

Proven when it Matters Most

3D printing is a great manufacturing option that can meet rapidly changing demands. Find out how Shapeways can help with your product creation needs with efficient and high quality 3D printing.

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